Captain Arden of the Emberwake
Half-Orc / Half-Firbolg – Veteran Sailor, Reluctant Leader, Iron-Willed Protector
Backstory
Arden was born in the desolate port city of Sindar, where the salt never left the air and the sea was both cradle and coffin. His mother, a Firbolg healer from the coastal Groves of Leoruun, had fled the fey-touched forests after her people were slaughtered by expansionist ships, iron-wrought, imperial, merciless. She found uneasy sanctuary in a human pirate haven, and there met Arden’s father, a half-orc deckhand known as Ulgor, feared for his fury in boarding parties, yet known by his crew as the one who sang old orcish lullabies when the storms came.
Arden’s earliest memories are of blood and brine. His father was killed when he was only seven, thrown overboard during a mutiny he tried to stop. His mother was soon taken by sickness, her spirit too gentle for the violence that clung to the docks. Alone, Arden was left in a world that saw him as too strange, too big, too quiet, and far too dangerous when roused.
The boy survived by fixing ships. He learned the names of sails and the moods of ropes. He could patch a hull faster than most men could tie a knot. But what he truly learned was how to listen, to the boards creaking with secrets, to old men cursing gods in their sleep, to the ever churning hunger of the sea.
He joined his first crew at fourteen. By sixteen, he'd killed his first man. Not for glory, but because the man had struck a boy no older than he once was. Arden didn’t speak for three days after that. When he did, it was to ask for the boy's name.
Rise to the Emberwake
Arden found the Emberwake when she was in ruins, her sails torn, her figurehead broken, her name nearly forgotten. She was docked in an uncharted port, abandoned after a blood-slick mutiny had claimed her captain and most of her crew. But something about the ship called to him. Perhaps it was the iron bones beneath the rot, or maybe it was the ghost of a purpose he thought he'd lost.
He took to repairing her alone, slowly, over months, salvaging, bartering, even stealing when needed. Other misfits joined him, outcasts, broken warriors, exiles from sea and shore. Not because he inspired them with words, he rarely speaks unless it's needed, but because he worked harder than any of them and never asked for more than he gave.
When the Emberwake finally sailed again, it was Arden who took the wheel. Not because he sought command, but because no one else would. They called him "Captain" out of gratitude at first, now they call him that out of respect.
Personality & Place on the Crew
Arden is a quiet man, but not cold. He listens more than he speaks, and when he does speak, his words weigh like anchors. His mixed blood grants him a towering frame and strength enough to wrestle down rigging in a storm, but his soul is tempered with Firbolg stillness and compassion. He carries both peace and fury, one behind each eye, and his crew knows to trust whichever one stirs in that moment.
He smokes when he's thinking, an old habit, but not one born out of pleasure. It serves as a reminder of the fires he’s survived and the ones he’ll never forget. He wears the tricorn hat of the first captain he ever sailed under, not out of sentimentality, but as a reminder of what hubris costs.
Though he claims the sea as his home, Arden dreams of forests he’s never seen, of soft moss, towering trees, and the quiet song of a life unburdened by the weight of others. But he never speaks of this. Instead, he remains at the helm, bearing the burden of his crew like the hull bears the sea.
They are his family now. The misfits, the broken, the strange, the damned. And for every one of them, he would burn the horizon.
“None of us started whole. We're driftwood. Splinters from different wrecks. But lash enough broken things together... and you get a hull that won't break.” - On the Emberwake Crew
“I don’t want her to be like us. I want her to see stars without thinking of sails.” - On Lorelai
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